To inform, inspire, and educate

Direct Projects: HEART

HEART’s humane education programs seek to instill compassion and respect for other people, animals and the environment and provide students the tools to make positive changes. HEART has specially designed age-appropriate instructional programs taught by their own staff of humane education instructors. Humane Education is required by state mandate to be taught in all public elementary schools in New York with a loss of public funding if the law is not adhered to. In reality, few teachers or administrators are even aware of the law and HEART is one of the few organizations providing critical humane education services.

In 2014 there was a continued focus on incorporating service learning into all aspects of the organization’s programming, including both the in-class program and the after-school and out of school programs. In addition, HEART continued to expand and broaden the program to train teachers and other professionals to teach HEART lessons in their own schools and other venues. An important accomplishment in 2014 was the finalization of a comprehensive 160 page resource guide on animal issues which was published in partnership with the International Fund for Animal Welfare under a grant from the ASPCA.

HEART continued to expand its national reach through its offices in Chicago, Indianapolis and Portland, Oregon. The goal of the HEART expansion cities is not only to extend HEART’s curriculum to those cities, but also to help form a national network that can increasingly leverage the curriculum that now includes over 160 lessons. HEART intends to continue to broaden its reach by the national distribution of the resource guide mentioned above as well as a new HEART Certified Teachers program under which we will train teachers anywhere in the country to teach parts of our curriculum.